From top: Payal Patel placed a garland on her groom Nikhil Warrier during their evening ceremony in May; Patel was escorted down the aisle by her aunt and uncle; more than 600 guests attended the wedding ceremony at the Point Loma home of the bride; the parents of the bride poured water from the altar over the couples' hands. (Peggy Peattie / Union-Tribune)

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From top: Payal Patel placed a garland on her groom Nikhil Warrier during their evening ceremony in May; Patel was escorted down the aisle by her aunt and uncle; more than 600 guests attended the wedding ceremony at the Point Loma home of the bride; the parents of the bride poured water from the altar over the couples' hands. (Peggy Peattie / Union-Tribune)

Left, the bride's parents, Asha and Shailesh &#8220;Sunny&#8221; Patel, took a call from officials in India who watched via Webcam. Right, Nikhil Warrier was presented with a garland of roses by his mother, Girija. (Peggy Peattie / Union-Tribune)

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Left, the bride's parents, Asha and Shailesh “Sunny” Patel, took a call from officials in India who watched via Webcam. Right, Nikhil Warrier was presented with a garland of roses by his mother, Girija. (Peggy Peattie / Union-Tribune)

Apparently, Payal Patel and Nikhil Warrier don't believe in doing anything the easy way. When the couple got engaged last year, instead of planning a typical American-style wedding that would last at most several hours, they opted for a traditional Indian wedding involving several ceremonies, many costume changes and more than 1,000 guests, spreading out over three days.

If this were not staggering enough, the couple scheduled their May 28-30 wedding just a couple of weeks after Patel's graduation from medical school at Virginia Commonwealth University. And, in between finalizing details for their fast-approaching nuptials in Point Loma where Patel's parents live, the two were busy securing their medical residencies at NYU Hospital and moving to New York.

“My parents tease me now,” Patel said from her college back east just a few days before her graduation. “They said, 'We should have skipped all this and just had a reception.' ”

But Patel would hear none of that. Despite the millions of details surrounding her graduation and the work and anxiety of choreographing an elaborate wedding while being on one coast with her family on another, the 25-year-old Patel was adamant about sticking to tradition.

“Ever since I was a little girl, I've always attended very traditional Indian weddings,” she said. “It's exactly what I've dreamed of and always have wanted for myself.”

This meant some of the big decisions were delayed, because Patel and her family were in different time zones and her parents didn't want to proceed without her stamp of approval. As with any wedding, a month prior found the bride worrying, “Oh my God, I don't know how this is all going to pan out” to two weeks before with the bride thinking, “Finally, things are coming together.”

Patel and her groom, Warrier, whose family is from the Washington, D.C., area, met at Indian cultural organizations at the Richmond, Va., college where they did their undergraduate work. Their courtship progressed slowly, from being casual friends and attending temple together to long-distance commuter dating for 6½ years as the two attended separate medical schools. Warrier, 26, proposed to Patel – American style, on one knee with a rose in hand – on her birthday last fall at a romantic dinner near New York's Central Park. The couple had their Indian engagement last June, with both sets of parents coming together to give their consent and make sure “everyone is on the same page,” Patel said.

In keeping with tradition, a religious ceremony accompanied that engagement. The wedding planning then began in earnest.

First up for the wedding weekend was a Mehndi ceremony Thursday evening at the Point Loma home of Patel's parents. There, 200 guests gathered to watch Patel's female relatives apply the traditional henna tattoos to the bride's hands and arms up to her elbows and on her legs.

Dancing and singing accompanied the joyous occasion, with dinner following. Per tradition, the Indian garb Patel wore during the ceremony was earmarked to be taken back to India with her grandmother to be given to the barber in her town.

Friday, Patel and Warrier's wedding day dawned overcast and a bit chilly.

At 8 a.m., a priest invoked blessings in a function called Ganesh Punja for Patel's family in their home. A Pithi ceremony was performed simultaneously in the bride and groom's family homes to prepare the couple for their nuptials. Breakfast followed.

Mid-morning, another ceremony, Grah Shanti, was conducted to seek the blessings of all the planets. Lunch followed.

And, for this culture so steeped in ceremony, even the groom's arrival at the wedding site could not go without its own ceremony. In a ritual called Baraat, Warrier traveled to the bride's house in a convertible (the steep hill made the traditional horse-drawn carriage impractical), accompanied by his family members, with music, singing and dancing as part of the procession.

For this, and to accommodate the 600-plus wedding guests, the Patel family had to gain permission from the city of San Diego to block off the street in front of their home.

And then, the wedding. For the occasion, Patel exchanged the sari she had been wearing during the day for a blood-red beaded ensemble made for her by a designer in Bombay.

“It's very beautiful, very intricate, very heavy,” Patel said. “It weighs 50 to 60 pounds, probably more. It has a lot of gold work and crystal work to make it shimmery and shiny.”

Patel traveled to India with her mother in December to visit her mother's family and see her father's ancestral home. The two-week stay also gave her a chance to shop for the many things, such as her wedding costume, she would need to replicate a traditional Indian ceremony in San Diego.

Following their nuptials, Patel and Warrier and their guests feasted on a sumptuous vegetarian repast called Gujarati. The long day concluded with one final ceremony, Vidai, in which the bride's family sent her to be with the groom's family.

“It's an official goodbye,” Patel explained.

Lest you think that was the end of the Patel-Warrier festivities, there was one more gathering the next evening that was nearly as elaborate as all that preceded it.

With Warrier in a tuxedo and Patel in another gorgeous outfit of mauve fabric and crystal work, 1,200 guests – many of whom had traveled from India – filled a banquet hall at the Manchester Grand Hyatt for a reception and dinner. Unlike the wedding ceremony's color scheme of deep reds, bright yellows and oranges, Saturday's reception was bathed in shades of pink and mauve.

Graduated candles hanging from crystal trees and rose ball centerpieces graced each table. The Hyatt's pastry chef designed the enormous cake, and an eight-piece Indian dance troupe from Los Angeles performed.

Patel and Warrier danced their first dance to “Pehla Nasha,” a popular song from the '90s Hindi movie “Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar.” Dinner and dancing went on until 1 a.m.

The newlyweds spent two days with family before flying to Hawaii for a weeklong honeymoon. From there, it's back to New York to start their new lives as medical residents. They have the far-off hope they will come back to San Diego to live someday, she as a dermatologist, he as a cardiologist.

“After going through all this, I owe everything to my parents and my extended family,” Patel said while planning the wedding. “I am a very lucky person to have been brought up in such an environment where you always feel like you have so many people who genuinely care about you and are interested.

“It's just so neat to grow up in an environment where you never feel alone.”